Trump Silent as Russia Retaliates Against U.S. Sanctions Bill

Trump delivers a speech on gang violence at Suffolk Community College on July 28th.

By Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Getty Images.

For a notoriously thin-skinned president who rarely hesitates to hit back, Donald Trump was notably quiet over the weekend after Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that his government would seize two United States diplomatic properties in Moscow and ordered hundreds of American diplomats to leave the country. Days earlier, Congress had overwhelmingly passed a new sanctions bill targeting Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, outraging Putin. “It was the time to show that we’re not going to leave that without an answer,” he said Sunday during an interview on state television. Trump himself has not responded.

The escalating tensions come at a critical time for the West Wing, which is embroiled in scandal over federal investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The president is in a bind, with no option but to sign a veto-proof bill that the White House originally objected to as a dangerous check on the administration’s ability to negotiate better relations with Russia. “President Donald J. Trump read early drafts of the bill and negotiated regarding critical elements of it,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Friday, spinning the final bill as a compromise rather than a loss. “He has now reviewed the final version and, based on its responsiveness to his negotiations, approves the bill and intends to sign it.”

Nevertheless, the episode marks a major setback for the president, who now finds his hands tied by his own party. The bill, which both imposes fresh sanctions on Russia and restrains Trump’s power to lift them, passed the House and the Senate with votes of 419 to 3 and 98 to 2, respectively—a significant rebuke just six months into his presidency. With a number of Trump’s associates under investigation in the ongoing F.B.I. probe into whether his campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election, Trump would have risked political embarrassment had he fought the new sanctions. “It would have been foolhardy for the Trump administration to veto this bill,” Edward Fishman, a former Obama State Department official who worked on Russia sanctions policy, told Politico. “Congress would have overridden the veto, and all it will do is fuel the fire of the Russia scandal in Washington.”

The response from Russia was swift. After the bill survived Congress, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the U.S. would have to reduce “the total number of American diplomatic and consular office employees in the Russian Federation” to 455 people. In an interview with Russian media, Putin said, “Because more than 1,000 workers—diplomats and support staff—were working and are still working in Russia, 755 must stop their activity in the Russian Federation.”

Moscow had originally refrained from a tit-for-tat response in December, when President Barack Obama imposed additional sanctions on Russia, which included expelling 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and seizing two suspected spy compounds in New York and Maryland. A statement from the Kremlin at the time suggested that Putin would wait for warmer relations with the Trump administration rather than respond in kind. But now, with the American president stymied in his campaign goal to forge a closer alliance with Russia, the conflict between the two countries is getting colder. “We had such hope that the situation would change, but judging by the situation that will not be soon,” Putin said, according to Russian media. “I thought it was time for us to show that we will not leave this without an answer. As for other possible measures, or whether it is a lot or not, this is quite sensible from the point of view of the work of the diplomatic department.”

The Trump administration barely noted the escalation. “We continue to believe that if Russia will change its behavior, our relationship can change for the good and improve for the interests in both of our countries and the interest of peace and stability in this region and around the world,” Vice President Mike Pencesaid over the weekend during a trip to Estonia. “The president has confirmed repeatedly that we believe Russia did meddle in U.S. elections . . . I think he has also said it could have been other actors as well. But he’s confirmed his belief and our intelligence that Russia was involved in meddling in U.S. elections and it’s part of what inspired the bipartisan action in the Congress to codify the sanctions that our administration has been implementing against Russia and will continue to advance that.”

But as of Monday morning, Trump himself has remained silent. “Big escalation—and big dilemma for Trump,” Andrew Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote on Twitter. “Will he roll over or retaliate?”